Vultures circling the wreckage of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Irma are closing in on a long-sought prize: the privatizing of the island’s electric utility.

Puerto Rico avoided the very worst of the storm, which darted just north of the U.S. territory. But it didn’t escape unscathed. Following a request from Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló, the White House declared a state of emergency. Three people were killed and more than 1 million were left without electricity in the storm’s wake.

The fragile body responsible for that power is the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, whose executive leadership warned ahead of the storm that parts of the island could be left without electricity for up to six months. Thanks to the change in the storm’s path and a crew of dedicated line workers, Prepa, the island’s sole electricity provider, now expects most towns to have their lights back on within two weeks and full power within a month. As of Monday, more than 70 percent of homes had already gotten electricity back.

But once the lights are turned on, Puerto Rican households will face a new threat.

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“[The investors] have the best sales pitch now,” Carlos Gallisá, a former consumer representative on Prepa’s board of directors, told The Intercept by phone from San Juan. “They have already started, saying that only privatization will serve the people.”

For struggling governments around the world, privatizing utilities has come to be seen as a kind of get-rich-quick scheme, offering an upfront infusion of cash to underfunded municipalities. Given Prepa’s size and that of its debt — $9 billion — it has been a long-standing target for privatizers, even before Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act last year to help rein in Puerto Rico’s mounting debt crisis. The blackout following Irma just added fuel to the fire. Days before Irma hit, Rosselló emphasized that privatization is firmly on the table, telling the New York Timesthat Irma “can become an opportunity or another liability.” According to a Friday report from Reorg Research, a trade publication for investors, creditors and members of Puerto Rico’s federally appointed financial oversight board have met with Prepa top brass in recent days to discuss a new “transformation plan” aimed at privatizing major aspects of the power authority. The two anonymous sources for the story claimed that the plan could go so far as “breaking up” Prepa entirely, selling pieces of the utility to various bidders.

In radio interviews after the storm, a representative from the Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers Union (UTIER) that represents Prepa workers denounced the utility’s leadership for not sending 170 available workers out to reconnect lines and accused it of delaying restoration to build support for a corporate selloff. In the last several months, the union has made similar charges, alleging that Prepa has intentionally degraded service to prime the pump for privatization. Rumors circulated on social media, too, that Prepa’s foreboding warnings about storm-related outages were a signal for privatizers from its new leadership — installedas part of an agreement with Prepa’s creditors — that the system has reached a breaking point.

Like many other public corporations in Puerto Rico, Prepa’s leadership is wont to change with different administrations. Gallisá was elected in 2016 to serve as one of three consumer advocates on the Prepa board, only to be shunted in March when Rosselló — considered friendly to the creditors — assumed office this year. Because those position are elected, local lawmakers had to pass special legislation in order to remove Gallisá and other board members from office. “They fired everybody with the new law, and they threw us out,” Gallisá said. “They appointed members of the party in power, and that’s who are there now.”

Gallisá also suspects that one of the reasons for his ouster was that he and the other consumer advocates were outspoken about their opposition to privatization and increasing involvement from Prepa’s creditors. “At the beginning, when the governor discussed with the bondholders, the bondholders were very interested in having two or three seats [on] the board. We told them, ‘No way, they can’t have seats on the board.’”

Although the buzz about privatization picked up in the lead-up to and aftermath of Irma, it’s been on the agenda for years. Lisa Donahue, a consultant enlisted by Prepa to restructure the agency’s debt, floated the idea before Congress last year, and governors of Puerto Rico have discussed privatization as far back as 2012. At the end of July, four of the seven oversight board members penned aWall Street Journal op-ed, titled “Privatize Puerto Rico’s Power”, published just after the body had rejected a restructuring proposal from Prepa. “We believe that only privatization will enable Prepa to attract the investments it needs to lower costs and provide more reliable power throughout the island,” the authors argued. “By shifting from a government entity to a well-regulated private utility, Prepa can modernize its power supply, depoliticize its management, reform pensions, and renegotiate labor and other contracts to operate more efficiently.”

By building on existing legislation, PROMESA grants the board legal authority to do it.Act 76, passed by Puerto Rico’s legislature in 2000, allows governmental bodies to bypass certain permitting processes during a state of emergency. It also allows the governor to “amend, revoke regulations and orders, and rescind or resolve agreements, contracts, or any part of them” so long as the state of emergency is in effect.

Rosselló invoked Act 76 to issue anexecutive order declaring a state of emergency for the U.S. territory’s energy infrastructure in January, then issued a continuation of that order in early July. Title V of PROMESA essentially extends the expedited, emergency-permitting process established under Act 76 to any of the “critical projects” outlined within it, which are required both to address an emergency and to have immediate access to private capital. Any agency that receives a critical projects proposal is required by law to put it through an expedited permitting process. The revitalization coordinator, a position created by the oversight board under Title V, must then submit a report on the project’s necessity and a recommendation to the governor, after which point the public has 30 days to comment. The revitalization coordinator is further charged with responding to those comments and relaying them to the oversight board within five days of the end of the comment period.

Under the current state of emergency, any company that submits a proposal for a critical project can bypass the permitting process ordinarily required of major projects in Puerto Rico and appeal directly to the oversight board rather than to Puerto Rican regulatory authorities or the commonwealth’s government.

“Title V is a blueprint to transform a public utility. … There are interests who were already knocking on Congress’s door to take on the issue of Prepa. When you have a body like the board, that is only accountable to Congress, companies and individuals that want to invest in Puerto Rico aren’t going to lobby the government of Puerto Rico,” said Deepak Lamba-Nieves, the Research Director for the Center for a New Economy, a Puerto Rico-based think tank. “They’re going to lobby Congress.”

As Lamba-Nieves suggested, the origins of Title V might explain why it’s so friendly to private interests and especially, to energy companies who have an interest in getting in on the ground floor of Prepa energy generation. One of its chief authors, Bill Cooper, was recruited by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who oversees the House committee with jurisdiction over Puerto Rico. Cooper was an adviser to Bishop, and was, while drafting PROMESA until today, the head of the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, a trade association for LNG producers and transporters. At one point, his name was floated for the position of head of the oversight board. Commenting on that prospective appointment, one Capitol Hill lobbyisttold Caribbean Business last year that “it is a done deal, Bill Cooper is going to be the executive director of the federal control board. … The fact that he has ties to the energy sector is no coincidence.”

In an interview with Politico last week, Bishop wasexplicit about what sorts of changes he hoped to see in the commonwealth’s energy system post-Irma: “[Prepa’s problems] are always on our radar. … They need to get a [liquefied natural gas] port there, we’ve got to get them off hard oil, but that’s not necessarily caused by the hurricane. … That’s part of the frustration we had with Prepa; they need to be able to attract more capital.”

The man tapped for that job is Noel Zamot, the revitalization coordinator hired by the oversight board in late July. Zamot, who did not respond to TheIntercept’s multiple requests for comment, is the founder of a cybersecurity consultancy with a background in engineering and the military. Since coming on board, he has been soliciting critical projects proposals, almost all of which, to this point, deal with generation. Asked about Zamot’s role by Puerto Rican newspaper Metroat the end of August, Oversight Board Chairman José B. Carrión III said in a radio interview that his main task would be to “privatize the Electric Power Authority as soon as possible.”

Public employees at the Electric Power Authority and Highway Patrols during and after the passage of Hurricane Irma in Puerto Rico on Sept. 7, 2017.

Photo: Xavier Garcia/GFR Media/AP

This most recent privatization push is taking place in the midst of a broader economic crisis in Puerto Rico, which is facing $74 billion of municipal debt. How did that happen? In a nutshell: Corporations flocked to the island for years thanks to a series of tax incentives, and public agencies there eagerly issued bonds to creditors who could collect a subsidy for buying them come tax season. Those incentives came under assault in the mid-90s, and, as they faded, manufacturers’ interest in the island faded too.

Due to a series of lingering and idiosyncratic tax breaks, American investors — hedge funds, mutual funds, and individuals — kept buying up bonds from Puerto Rico that were by then considered junk, without much concern for just how dire the island’s financial situation really was.

All this reached a breaking point in a 2006 recession that the global recession two years later only exacerbated. Before long, the commonwealth was having major trouble paying interest on its loans. But for reasons that remain a mystery, Puerto Rican public institutions have not been allowed to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy since 1984. Because much of Puerto Rico’s debt is owned by a coterie of American creditors, however, the Puerto Rican government and agencies therein can still be sued in the American legal system for nonpayment.

That’s part of why hedge funds spent so much money to keep the anti-bankruptcy statute in place when debates around Puerto Rico’s debt started coming to a head in Washington post-crash. As lawmakers discussed the debt crisis, the funds poured millions of dollars into lobbying efforts and a string of front groups. One such outfit, dubbed Main Street Bondholders, was allegedly “comprised of small bondholders from across America who are committed to a policy process that returns Puerto Rico to sound financial management.”

To avoid a default — and a war between bondholders and the island’s government — Congress last July passed PROMESA. The law endows a federally appointed Financial Oversight and Management Board with broad authority to restructure the island’s debt and raise revenue. Among its powers are the ability to break union contracts, cut pensions, and take control of public assets. The legislation also established several policy protocols for how to rein in spending and fiscal management across various sectors of the Puerto Rican economy. Among the 30 percent cuts now outlined are plans to close down 75 percent of the commonwealth’s public agencies, lower the minimum wage, and privatize a slew of public corporations.

Like austerity measures elsewhere, PROMESA was passed amid tremendous controversy. Just before it went to a vote on Capitol Hill, a majority of Puerto Ricans were found to reject the creation of an oversight board. Many see it as a colonial power, one of many in the island’s long and fraught colonial relationship with a U.S. government that has severely limited Puerto Rico’s autonomy and democratic structures. It’s easy to see why: Though its authority officially circumvents that of the commonwealth governor and legislature, only one of the board’s seven members is required to be from Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican governor is technically a member of the board but cannot vote on any of its final decisions. Protests have continued since PROMESA’s passage against various austerity measures, including amassive student strike against university privatization this past May.

Bondholders are angry about the restructuring arrangement and Prepa privatization plan for nearly opposite reasons. Unsatisfied with PROMESA and seeking faster repayment, they are now actively pressuring both the board and Puerto Rican government officials to expand cuts already slated to happen over the next several years. Those with who hold Prepa’s debt fear privatization could mean losing their collateral.

Though the drive to privatize Prepa has come largely from above, few would argue that it can continue as is. The status of the utility’s infrastructure has declined steadily over the last few decades, and many of its generation and distribution systems are dangerously outmoded. A blackout following a transmission line failure last September left half of the island without power.

“This disaster is waiting to happen. No one could say that they didn’t know the electrical system was in a state of disrepair,” says Cathy Kunkel, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, who has presented expert testimony on Prepa’s status.

A study from the Center for a New Economy found that the system loses 12 percent of its sales revenue annually to faulty billing and theft, and its leadership has historically operated without oversight and transparency. Prepa is suffering, too, from the same workforce drain as the rest of the Puerto Rican economy, where as much as 10 percent of the working-age population has emigrated in the last four years. For the utility sector, that means an aging workforce is tasked with caring for its decrepit infrastructure. That trend continuing long-term could spell disaster.

Power generation problems run still deeper. Like most other island power systems, Prepa is inordinately dependent on imported oil, which supplies about four-fifths of the island’s power and is put out to market via old and inefficient generation plants. And because most energy is produced in the south and consumed in the north, a sizable portion of what is produced gets lost along the way. A recent study commissioned by the Puerto Rican government found “a rapidly increasing generation outage rate, and customer outage levels four to five times higher than other U.S. utilities,” with authors adding that “it is difficult to overstate the levels of disrepair and operational neglect at Prepa’s generation facilities. … Prepa’s system today appears to be running on fumes and in our opinion desperately requires an infusion of capital — monetary, human, and intellectual — to restore a functional utility.”

As storms like Irma become more likely — and more likely to batter Puerto Rico — thanks to climate change, the need for an updated energy system there will only grow more urgent. “It’s pretty predictable that a Caribbean island with this sort of infrastructure would face a problem like this at some point,” Kunkel told TheIntercept. “Prepa is this really disappointing example of public ownership. It’s a non-transparent entity that is not doing its job of investing in the ongoing upkeep of the generation system. It’s hard to make the argument that Prepa is some blameless entity that, had it been well-funded, would have done its job well.”

To help reform the agency in 2014, Prepa enlisted management consultant Lisa Donahue, of AlixPartners, as its chief restructuring officer. Two years and nearly $43.6 million in contracts to AlixPartners later, Prepa had cut several corners and managed to hold bondholders at bay, but was scarcely closer to a comprehensive restructuring. Donahue left the project after her sixth contract extension expired last winter. In late July, the oversight boardrejected a restructuring proposal between Prepa and creditors based partially on her work, punting Prepa into default and then bankruptcy court-like proceedings outlined under Title III of PROMESA, where it now sits. Though no longer on the board, Gallisá is still an active opponent of privatization, and he hopes the court proceedings will result in the utility being able to write off a significant portion of its debt. Fearful that they could lose out on their collateral, Prepa creditors have sued the board to stop Title III proceedings.

AES Guayama Plant Treatment Plant for Ashes of the AES Company in Guayama. These ashes are not covered, at times of the passage of Hurricane Irma in Puerto Rico on Sept. 6, 2017.

Photo: Photo: Xavier Garcia/GFR Media/AP

While the board has been transparent about its desire to privatize the system, it’s less clear what it hopes privatization will look like — in part because most of those conversations have happened behind closed doors. Kunkel and Gallisá both predict that the board will move to privatize only power generation and sourcing, leaving transmission lines up to the public authority and embarking on a series of private-public partnerships.

As CNE and others argue, widespread privatization is far from the only way to whip Prepa into shape. “Prepa was created as a public good for the people of Puerto Rico. The model needs to change, but I don’t think the notion of the public good needs to wiped out,” Lambda-Nieves contended. “We’re all in favor of restructuring the debt,” he added of CNE, “but what you need to be thinking about is economic growth, not how you focus on how to appease specific bondholders.”

It’s not as if Prepa’s existing experiments with privatization have been success stories. The utility currently purchases around 30 percent of its power from two private sources, an AES coal plant in Guayama and a natural gas plant in Peñuelas, owned by the Spanish company EcoElectrica. AES sparked a major fight in the area and abroad for the plant’s dumping of coal ash, which can seep into waterways and cause a number of health problems. Post-Irma, UTIER — the Prepa utility workers’ union — denounced both of the private providers for shutting down during the storm to protect their infrastructure, straining both public providers and the unionized workforce. Were large swaths of Prepa to be privatized, it’s also likely UTIER would be disbanded.

Many suspect, as well, that further privatization would also drive up rates for customers, which has already begun to happen as part of the negotiations with bondholders.

Lambda-Nieves noted that Prepa will likely need at least some level of private investment to survive, but that without a transformation of Prepa’s governance and active regulation, nothing will change for the better. Some inroads have been made on this front already. A push from CNE and other groups led to the creation of the 2014 Energy Reform Commission, which, according to Kunkel and Lambda-Nieves, has managed to avoid becoming ensnared in the kinds of partisan political fights that have plagued Prepa.

Contra Margaret Thatcher, there are a few alternatives between Prepa’s collapse and its total privatization. CNE recently partnered with researchers at Johns Hopkins University to produce a report outlining several steps for transitioning Puerto Rico’s power grid to renewable energy, reducing the expense and volatility of an oil-based grid and driving much-needed job creation and revenue growth in the process. “With Prepa we’re not in the present. We’re stuck in the past,” Lambda-Nieves said. “It’s not just about prices, it’s about the future. Are we going to compromise the health of future generations because we have an aging and polluting power source? If there are new technologies today that can help us generate energy, why are we not using them?”

The starving, mismanagement and privatization of Prepa couldn’t come at a worse historical moment. The only real path to dramatically reducing carbon emissions in order to stave off cataclysmic climate change runs through a World-War-II-level exertion by the public sector in the energy industry. Instead, in the wake of Hurricane Irma, Puerto Rico is headed in the opposite direction.

For now, Prepa’s fate rests with the courts — and in the clouds. If the storms now brewing in the Atlantic are any indication, it’ll have bigger problems than either its creditors or the oversight board in the not-too-distant future.

Article by Kate Aronoff; video by Averie Timm and Angel Manuel Soto

Top photo: A view of part of Parkville and the Urb Ponce de Leon and the bottom San Juan mostly without electricity on Sept. 6, 2017.

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Those are not Puerto Rican’s, those are Dominicans and Cubans that want us to be in the same situation as them in a dictatorship. kick them out the island we don’t need more poverty. In Puerto Rico we are different then them. Cubans and Dominicans cross to the island to have what we have “a opportunity to succeed in America”. They hate us because of it. if your Puerto Rican and you can’t find a way to succeed in Puerto Rico or America your just Lazy. we’re never going to separate from America. your going to have to kill all of us Real Puerto Rican’s, so stay out our island you illegal alien go get F’d by a dictator………..

Some people suspect that global warming is a strategy for introducing new regulations that increase the power of government over people’s daily lives. This is the first article I have seen arguing that global warming will lead to more privatization. However, the apparent discrepancy can be resolved if you assume a gradual merging of government and private companies following the Fascist model. That way, both government and corporations will benefit from global warming, which potentially is even more lucrative than war as a profit generating mechanism. Anything that is destroyed, has to be rebuilt, generating increased economic activity. The means by which something is destroyed is just a technical detail.

I’m not arguing that war is obsolete. Some areas of the earth – in temperate climates well above sea level – will be relatively immune to the effects of global warming. So wars will still be necessary, at least in these regions. You always have to have a Plan A and a Plan B.

Countries should NEVER privatize natural monopolies, or industries that have a very high barrier to entry. This has NEVER been in a population’s best interests, and has ALWAYS had a detrimental effect wherever it has been done.

Ben, absolutes such as NEVER and ALWAYS are usually incorrect. You should see the pathetic state of infrastructure we have here. All thanks to corrupt public monopoly that has led against the best interest of the population.

I don’t know about ‘ALWAYS’ because most state power companies in the US are private state regulated monopolies and their rates represent costs and a regulated profit.

Something is terribly wrong with the PR state management of this normally quite profitable energy business. The buyers of this system will have to assume huge existing debt and huge needed new investment but that PR will never be able to do.

Investors, some of them rich, face huge losses from earlier funds that were somehow wasted by PR but people who have retirement funds and other smaller investors could be financially crushed if PR were allowed to default on their promises as a near-state.

The Three Collectivist Musketeers here have only shown that statist management of local energy is a failure but they continue to preach the World Government gospel needed for their Warmer agenda to overcome its fake science being rejected and growing fact based skepticism.

So, you advocate that we should upend what (hypocritical) capitalists say is the way it should be: you take a risk, if you win, big reward, if you lose, big loss.

It’s the “risk / reward system”.

The people who “invested” in Puerto Rico and who didn’t realize it was forced into being run in a really crappy way deserve to lose their investments – or at least their profits – if bankruptcy is the normal rational answer.

Asking (demanding as they are) that pensioners and workers lose their pensions and be cheated out of what amounts to their pay just to protect investors who intentionally took a risk is unconscionable.

People who think that’s an appropriate thing to do are scum and have no humanity. They deserve to be made penniless and homeless. Let them see how society treats “the little people” first hand.

I work in the securities industry. FINRA is busy investigating the sales of many, many Puerto Rico muni bonds by broker-dealers in the U.S. Many of these bonds paid pretty high interest. They are focusing in on individual financial advisors, which seems to be scapegoating.

They are also investigating the Wall Street firms that offered this stuff. The odds of any real regulatory action against Wall Street is pretty dim, though. Who convinced the mainstream neo-liberal politicians of Puerto Rico to mortgage their whole island? Wall Street! Much as they did to Greece and other countries. Wall Street weakened the finances of Puerto Rico to the point where another knock-out punch storm could turn it into a corporate banana republic really fast. And that is what seems to be happening…

I don’t see enough details here. I realize they’re behind closed doors, and that’s part of the problem, but being for OR against privatization of power generation based on ideology seems like a mistake. Deng Jiaoping once said that it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice … and whatever has happened in China, it is not generally classified as a failure.

Here in the mainland U.S. I certainly feel like competition between private energy producers had a positive effect and let me get a lower electricity bill, at a time where anti-competitive industries like medicine have gone through the roof. At the same time, I recognize that lunatic schemes to sell off public monopolies for quick cash are nothing but predatory loans for the people. Any gang of suits trying to sell the public on the idea that raising debt by selling public monopolies is somehow better because it doesn’t cleanly add to the bottom-line deficit figure … will probably be making money selling the same governments “consulting tools to estimate their real national debt counting granted monopolies” in a couple of decades.

There’s a fundamental problem with privatization of essential public services/benefits, like healthcare, education and power. In a supply-demand economy, prices rise with demand. If a service is essential (say, you need surgery to survive) then demand is effectively infinite.

Hundreds of years of Puerto Rico has had hurricanes in emergency situations and the money that the US cents to Puerto Rico for help with a Puerto Rican government keeps they has no help for the people the people have been keeping it together themselves we the people stand together with food water clothing and shelter those houses that taking pictures abandoned houses people that don’t even live in their bills are crack houses I’ll send me have houses that are over 50 years old and doesn’t matter we have we know how to treat our house and clean milk mold and mildew with 10% bleach and water spray. This is propaganda lies so that the rest of the f****** work is believe the stupid s*** that goes on the island without living Island belittling the body cause what equals will stand we will resist the devil and rebuke the devil with their lies and that dirty money

It matters not how infrastructure is destroyed. War, neglect, deprivation, by any means necessary so that the thieves of wallstreet and congress, who spend the money of American citizens on useless paranoid military defense, just want to steal public property. When it comes to privitization of war, their rule is, You are either with us or gainst us.. When it comes to theft of public property (war against the population), their rule is, You are either with us or you will fall behind.

Search for images pf the US and Puerto Rico at night. You can find several. The east coast of the US is bright, of course. From Florida, follow along Cube, Haiti and the Dominican Republic (Hispaniola) to Puerto Rico. The whole island is just as bright as the brightest part of the US, and far brighter than any island nearby. It is the only place where the brightness is nearly constant across the entire physical area.

Why? Power is free for municipalities, so the number of street lights approaches infinity. (It is also free for churches, but that is not such a big drain.) And only in PR would would expect to find a municipality run tropical ice rink.

Couldn’t even read this. PR has been doomed for a ling time. The power grid in PR is ancient and despise all the money coming in the government run electric company has never addresses this issue, couple that with all the corruption, as in stealing government funds, gross negligence as seen in this power grid problem, exreme nepotism, government stealing income tax returns, etc. you can see how power over the financial situation was taken and given to the board. It’s the politicians fault and the people’s fault for being happy with shoddy unsustainable plans like over the top pensions and way too many government jobs. The PR government runs one of the worse health care systems I’ve seen. There is so much wrong in PR I won’t ever go back. I feel bad for the people that have to live there.

And because most energy is produced in the south and consumed in the north, a sizable portion of what is produced gets lost along the way.

The island has a modern power distribution system, 230 KV/ 115 KV. Such transmission systems can be hundreds of miles long. Typical loss in transmission is 2% in the US where the distances are longer. (Puerto Rico Rico is not even 50 Miles wide in the north/south direction.)

It is ludicrous to blame inefficiency on south to north transmission. Look elsewhere for the problems.

This story provides yet more evidence – as if any more were even necessary – that the ultra-rich are at war with We, The People, in every way they possibly can be.

Pure capitalism is every bit as dangerous a system as the next five you can name. We, The People _must_ put our infrastructure forever out of the hands of these vultures.

Better would end the ability to even become ultra-rich. … I’m not talking about the ordinary rich, but only the ultra-rich. We could argue exactly where that line might be drawn, but it’s at some point well beyond what any normal person would consider enough wealth to live the rest of their lives with and run an intermediate sized business.

Another important change we need is to end the personification of the corporation and to return to the original social-contract that permitted corporations to even be created – namely, that a corporation can only be created to serve a specific public good, and, also in particular, NOT be merely for the accumulation of capital / profits by those who control or own the corporation. You can have your sole proprietorship / partnership for those kinds of businesses – corporations are special and deserve elite status as NOT merely serving the selfish interests of the rich.

Yes, I’m well aware we’ve got a long way to go to get there, and a long, hard slog of a road to walk, but we have to try, as it’s the only way humanity, in the long run, survives.

“At the beginning, when the governor discussed with the bondholders, the bondholders were very interested in having two or three seats [on] the board. We told them, ‘No way, they can’t have seats on the board.’”

Investors giving money (or buying large swath of bonds) requesting seats on a board is not such an unreasonable position. I see the board’s refusal to find some sort of compromise as a failure.

A good compromise for this would have been to give them Observer Seats on the board. In other words, they could participate in discussion and understand what decisions were being made without the power to vote them down.

I agree turning over power to privateers for public services is not such a good idea as the goals between the two are incompatible. Privateers only want to supply electricity to those who they will make the Most profit on and not necessarily all citizens who need it. Profit motive should not be the driver for decisions on such a basic need in life. Same for healthcare.

This is truly a travesty for the citizens of Puerto Rico. I understand that bond-holders made an investment, but I seriously doubt they were ignorant to what was taking place, and what the repercussions would be. Puerto Rico is trying to solve this problem with both hands tied behind their back, and the citizens are the one’s paying the price for mistakes through no fault of their own.made by the government, and loopholes the hedge funds exploited. Puerto Rico should either become the 51st state, or be given it’s total independence. The public should be educated on the pro’s and con’s of either scenario, and be given a vote. Being able to file bankruptcy, should be dealt with immediately, our President is the self proclaimed “king of debt” and has filed for Bankruptcy numerous times. It can be figured out, and should be immediately.

Regardless of what the people would vote for, it’s not really up to them. They do vote on this issue, and neither of your scenarios end up with a majority of votes (relative to the number of eligible voters).

I agree it’s a bad situation for them to be in, and declaring bankruptcy would help. At the same time, they badly need some form of capital injection into the island, so either raise taxes (people won’t like that), or allow investors (people won’t like that either).

Another Devil & Deep Blue Sea scenario of decaying infrastructure and costs and corruption. We see it on the mainland to a lesser degree but on a vaster scale. Just a thought go green over a decade or two with a private investor-government-consumer consortium overseen by board of director stockholders-government and citizen representatives. Give a generous 10% cost savings bounty to those that identify corruption and stiff sentences to those caught. Everyone has a stack and skin in the game, play accordingly. We should try this on the mainland with a dash of antitrust as well.

I would like to see TI do more what if we did the right thing articles. Such as how do we green our World, live with AI, diver-less vehicles and no need for half the population to work? The brave new World is upon us whether we would have it or not so perhaps we should plan it.